An Unconventional War

How real and present is evil? Why does evil seem to be concentrated more in some places than others? I know that most of us who profess Christ believe that satan is real and that demons exist, but I think the belief tends to be rather cursory. We feel tempted by satan. We talk in terms of the devil did this and tried to get me to believe that. But do we really believe that evil in the form of demons and darkness and hell is present in and around our every day lives? Really present?

I watched a documentary last night called An Unconventional War. It's a remarkable story of faith and perserverance in the face of incredible evil. It centers on happenings in northern Uganda, where a rebel group calling itself the Lord's Resistance Army has been terrorizing people in unimaginably horrific ways for over twenty years. The documentary is the story of how the faith, prayer and persistence of a small group of people reverberated and eventually broke the back of this incredible evil. Here's how the film is described at the filmmakers website (The Sentinel Group):

A remarkable modern-day saga of prayer, forgiveness and deliverance.

For nearly two decades, a bizarre predatory cult known as the Lord's Resistance Army abducted over 25,000 children and turned them into sex slaves and killing machines. The resulting carnage has displaced 80 percent of the region's population.

This powerful documentary chronicles how fervent prayer and unique church-state cooperation played a pivitol role in taming one of history's most brutal insurgencies in northern Uganda. It is a message of hope to lost and oppressed people everywhere - Issuing a challenge to invite God's presence with abandonment and expectation!

I definitely recommend this video. It is an incredible story about the power of God. About how circumstances and things happening in the darkest of times can be used by God to bring about miraculous changes. Watch this video and tell me that the devil and demons aren't real. More than that, watch this film and tell me that God doesn't do amazing things through the body of Christ when people respond to Him in faith and step out to confront evil in the name of Jesus. And then imagine what God can accomplish through the Body of Christ if we are willing to move forward in faith and believe.

Breaking Radio Silence

I've done a terrible job on the blog front this week. Our time here at eleven72 has been consumed this week with the hurculean effort of finishing up a twenty minute industrial video that we were hired to do. It's good to finally have that off the plate and to be able to sit down with y'all (yes, I said y'all. we're in Texas here and that's how we roll).

By way of making up for a lack of interesting posts this week on our blog, I wanted to mention a few of the very cool things I've seen around the blogosphere lately (sure I'm working hard, but I've always got time for the net, right?). Anyway, here are some notes from my reader:

Hope For The Hokies

Greg Atkinson at Church Video Ideas posted a link to this site where the Passion folks are giving away some great worship tracks as their way of offering up hope for all the people struggling through the darkness reverberating from the terrible events that took place at Virginia Tech. You can see and download those tracks here.

Jott to Self

Have you heard of Jott? I heard about this one from Greg Davis on his blog Technically Speaking. Man, this Jott thing is really cool. I just signed up. From your cell phone, you can call Jott and leave a message for either yourself or one of your contacts. Then Jott transcribes that message and emails it to you or whoever you want it emailed too (emails it as text!). Check out their website for details. I'm looking forward to Jotting.

Brian Davis and Worship Tech Online

This is a new blog I read about on Church Video Ideas. I checked it out and it looks like it's going to be a fantastic resource for any of you out there who are in the trenches pulling off church services week in, week out. There was a great post on there a few days ago about using mics in your services and having back ups for your back ups. Brian Davis really seems to know his stuff and this looks like it will be a blog full of really good, practical, useful advice. Check it out here.


If you're a Gmail user, you should check out this Better Gmail extension that you can add if you use Firefox. I read about this on Lifehacker and I'm using it now. It does some really cool things like lets you save searches, has a filter assistant, gives you label colors, lets you preview conversations in your inbox and more. Read about it here on Lifehacker. The post includes instructions on how to download it.

Well that's what's happening in my corner of the blogosphere. I'd love to hear what you're reading. Leave some comments and we'll check out your favorite blogs and haunts.

My Friendship Connection

I am fired up. I had a great conversation yesterday with a guy named Vernon Brady who used to be the Vice President of the Church Growth Institute. He's spearheading an evangelism initiative called My Friendship Connection. And here's the awesome part for us: He wants eleven72 to help produce a series of videos for this oh so cool event (more on the event itself in a second). First a little background: Did you know that according to research done by the Church Growth Institute a full 86% of the people who trust Christ as their Savior do so because of the simple invitation of a friend. By way of contrast, only 2% come to Christ through the use of advertising. Wow. That is an amazing stat. The single most effective way to evangelize the people you know is to simply invite them to church. We didn't realize that the idea behind our video Just Ask was such a powerful one! But it makes sense when you think about it, because God is all about relationship.

Twenty years ago, Vernon was part of a program called Friend Day. The program, asking people to invite a friend to church, was used successfully by 47,000 churches. Since then, God has been growing up in Vernon a desire to see millions of people's lives forever changed through nothing more than being invited to church (and, of course, being reached by the Spirit and prompted to turn their lives over to Jesus). And the time is now. The seed that God planted with Vernon is poised to start a flood with My Friendship Connection.

What is My Friendship Connection?

My Friendship Connection is a strategy designed to mobilize your church for a great day of outreach. Synergy comes by connecting churches across North America on the same day with a single focus. Therefore, we seek to engage the masses into the largest army ever assembled for the purpose of reaching, evangelizing and winning friends to Jesus Christ through the local church.

Go to their website and check it out. Tell your church about it. Right now about 500 churches in Virginia are on board, but that number is quickly growing. They've had inquiries from other countries and big groups like the Southern Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board are expressing interest. Just hearing about it, I could tell that God is in this. Imagine what might happen if tens of thousands of churches get involved with this in the next few months. Imagine all the people who will walk through the door of a church on November 4th (that's the day when all of this culminates). My friends. Your friends. Tens of thousands of people. Imagine all the people who will come face to face with the life changing reality of Jesus Christ. What a great day for rejoicing that will be! All because friends simply asked their friends, "would you come to church with me?

I'm so excited that God brought this to Lee and I. So humbled that we might be used to serve God's Kingdom in such a powerful way. I have never met Vernon Brady face to face. We connected because of our media on the internet. He could have called anyone. He called us. God continues to amaze me daily. This life of following Christ is truly a great adventure.

I'll have more to post on this as things progress. For now, check out myfriendshipconnection.com. And get ready friends!

New Mother's Day Page and New April Freebies

We've got a whole lot of Mother's Day content up on the Seasonal Tab (click here to see it now). The Sermon Illustrations and the Countdown are some of our best selling videos ever, so we're really excited to have them all available this year at eleven72.com. And don't miss the new Worship Backgrounds and Still Backgrounds (most of them free - read below for details).

In the why did we make it category- We'd like to think For Mom: A Breakfast Story is a great video for setting up Mother's Day. Show the video, let everyone get a kick out of it, and then get up there and welcome everyone to the service and wish all the moms a Happy Mother's Day (this would be a good way to lead into a special portion of your service that honors the moms). Or use it to lead into your sermon and when you come out of it, say something like, "any one have a morning like that?" or "can anyone relate?" Whether you use it to kick off your service, lead into your announcements or get your sermon started, we made it to be a realistic, yet funny/heartwarming way to introduce Mother's Day.

For the Worst Mother's Day Gift Ideas and Mother's Day Countdown videos, we actually surveyed all the real moms and mom's to be we could and came up with this video based on the real answers they gave us. We thought, who better to let us know what moms don't want! The answers are a whole lot of fun. Use this as a stand alone video to give your congregation a laugh and lead into your sermon or announcements and/or use the countdown as a funny way to get your service started by pointing out what not to get mom for Mother's Day.

FREE ALERT :) Don't miss the new free stuff. We're giving away 10 (yes 10, they're somewhat similar, but still 10 freebies, that's good stuff, right?) Mother's Day themed Still Backgrounds and two new Worship Backgrounds. Lee did a great job on these backgrounds and I can't wait for you to check them out. I just can't get enough of the slomo rose petals - they're totally mesmerizing - and the loopable Gerber Daisy Background is just really clean and awesome looking. See it for yourself by clicking here. The freebies are available to email subscribers. If you're not yet a subscriber, click here to sign up on our homepage and we'll email you a link to download the new content. If you are a subscriber, stand by, and you'll get the link in our newsletter that goes out on Wednesday.

Signing off...

We Are Loved

"We Are Human Torches Lit By the Flame of God." So proclaims this striking piece of art stenciled, smeared and painted on a chunk of wood. I stumbled on the website www.weareloved.info while running down some referrals for designers. I got the referral from Eric Klein who is the super coolest guy and is currently pulling together the Better Off Rock'd Tour, a series of concerts featuring four of the top Christian rock groups and benefitting his new non-profit that is geared toward suicide prevention (more on that later, log on to www.betteroffrockd.com to find out more). Anyway, Eric referred me to the site of illustrator/designer Barak Hardley. I really really dig his paintings and designs. His choice of materials and the way he works with textures and wood and newspaper and spray paint. It's got weight to it, you know. Substance and decay. While looking around his site, I found a link to www.weareloved.info. I know I'm just gushing all this stuff here, but I'm really excited about Barak's work and I wanted to point it out. On the homepage of weareloved.info, there's this video that explains everything. This video is awesome. I aspire to tell stories like this. Check it out:




Feed Readers, click here to see the video.

Important Dates and Resources for May

I wanted post an update on what's happening around eleven72. First, we're hard at work getting our April round of free still backgrounds and free worship backgrounds ready to post and send out with our next newsletter. Look for that newsletter early next week. If you're not in the know, we give away free stills, backgrounds and other stuff every month to our email subscribers. To sign up, go to our homepage and you'll find the information in the lower right hand part of the page. If you sign up now, you can still get last months free stuff and then the new stuff when the newsletter goes out next week.

The National Day of Prayer is coming up May 3rd. If you've got plans to do a Prayer focused service the weekend before (April 28th-29th), we've got some resources that would work great for you.

Check out our Prayer Volume 1, a bundle of prayer related media pieces that include two Sermon Illustrations, a Countdown, five Still Backgrounds and two moving Worship Backgrounds. This has been a very popular volume for us, in particular, people have really responded well to the Prayer Illustration, which features thoughtful and inspirational quotes on Prayer, as well as original photography by esteemed photographer Joel Salcido. You can get a great deal by purchasing the entire volume, or you can order ala carte and get whatever you need.

Next up, in May, Mother's Day falls on May 13th. We're currently working on some new Mother's Day resources which I'll post about in the next few days. In the mean time, check out our wildly popular Sermon Illustration, For Mom: A Breakfast Story, which is a really honest, funny and heart warming look at some kids who are trying to make Mom's day extra special. While you're looking, don't miss our even more popular Mother's Day Countdown, which is based on an actual survey we took asking Moms the question, what's the worst Mother's Day gift you have either received or can think of (hint: getting her a scale is a really bad idea). The answers we got are hilarious. These two videos have been the most popular seasonal videos we've ever produced. Check them out.

Finally up in May is Memorial Day on May 28th. For those of you having Memorial Day services on May 27th, we're working on a brand new Sermon Illustration just for you. It's going to be a powerful piece that highlights the history of Memorial Day and ties that rich history into our remembering those who have fallen today. I'll be sure to post about that video when it's finished and available. Another great video we have that would work well on Memorial Day is Let Freedom Ring, a thoughtful collection of quotes and scripture that highlights the God centered values and principles our nation was founded on Let Freedom Ring is available as an Illustration and as a Countdown.

PowerPlugs for PowerPoint

A big thanks to reader danlwil for pointing :) me to PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds for PowerPoint. PowerPlugs from Crystal Graphics is a line of plugins for PowerPoint, and this particular plugin lets you (finally!) use moving backgrounds in PowerPoint. With it, you can take those awesome worship backgrounds you've been wanting to use, put them into PowerPoint and then key or put up the worship lyrics over the motion backgrounds. If you're using PowerPoint for worship, you need to check it out. This would open up a whole new world to you and your congregation. Moving backgrounds are a powerful tool for worship.

Here's danlwil's comment left on a blog post I wrote recently about how, as far as I could tell, you couldn't key text over moving backgrounds in PowerPoint:

We use PPT for our productions. There is a video player plugin by chrystal graphics that allows moving video in PPT... It is a memory hog, and a little clutzy... just this year they updated it to work in presentation mode... That helped alot... transitions are a bit sketchy and it (along with Microsoft is a bit unstable)... however.. I've learned to switch between multiple computers which gives me better flexability and stability.

So... I haven't used the PowerPlugs plugin myself, and danlwil does list a few caveats about the functionality of it, but if it lets you use motion backgrounds, it's definitely worth looking into. It looks like it will run you $149. So, it's not free but it's not as expensive as some of the other solutions and it looks like they offer a satisfaction gauranteed or your money back type policy. Check it all out for yourself here. And if you do end up using it, leave us some comments with your thoughts so we can pass those along to others.

Why Good Friday?

Two thousand years ago, on a day much like today, God, in the form of his son Jesus, was tried, tortured and crucified on a Roman cross. The God who created the heavens and the earth hung on a hill with common criminals. To pay the price for our sin. To bear our ultimate burden and to save us from death. What an incredible, unbelievably amazing act. But why do we call a day when such an injustice was paid to God by man Good Friday?

I found an explanation that I like on the United Methodist Church's website that I wanted to share:

The source of our term for the Friday before Easter, "Good Friday," is not clear. It may be a corruption of the English phrase "God's Friday," according to Professor Laurence Hull Stookey in Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church (p. 96). It is the common name for the day among English- and Dutch-speaking people. It is a day that proclaims God's purpose of loving and redeeming the world through the cross of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is a day that is good because God was drawing the world to God's self in Christ. As seen in John's gospel, particularly, God was in control. God was not making the best of a bad situation, but was working out God's intention for the world — winning salvation for all people. We call it "good" because we look backward at the crucifixion through the lens of Easter!

"Good Friday" is not a universal name for the day. The liturgical title for the day in the Western church was "Friday of Preparation," since the time Jews used the word paraskeue (getting ready) for Friday, meaning the "day of preparation." Popular names for the day are "Holy Friday" among the Latin nations, "Great Friday" among the Slavic peoples, "Friday of Mourning" in Germany, "Long Friday" in Norway, and "Holy Friday" (Viernes Santo) among Hispanic peoples.

I'd like to wish everyone a Good Good Friday. As I write this, the Body of Christ all over the world begins to celebrate the most incredible act in human history. God's sacrifice, perfect blood shed, blood that makes us clean. Grace that none of us deserve, extended by the hand of the Creator of the universe. And through this act and our belief in Jesus Christ, we pass from death to life and become the adopted sons and daughters of the Most High. As we move from Good Friday to Easter, we rejoice as the apostle Paul says in Romans 5: 10-11:

10For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Happy Easter everyone. Our redeemer lives. And that is more than good!

Free Easter Worship Backgrounds and Stills

This is a message for all you last minute shoppers :). We're getting a lot of traffic this week from Google folks who are searching for free Easter resources. For those of you who don't know or haven't been here before, our free Easter resources are available by signing up for our email list on the homepage (Click Here to go to there now). And while you're here, please check out our other great Easter videos here in our Seasonal store.

Sign up for our email list and you will receive a link to download two Easter themed loopable worship backgrounds and two awesome Easter themed still backgrounds that would make great backgrounds for your Easter Power Point slides. The free Easter pack is really well done. I have to give props to my partner Lee for that. He's done a great job designing these. We have these media pieces available on other sites for sale this Easter season and they're selling really well. But you can get them for free here! You can check out the whole package by visiting our Free Media page. Then go back to the homepage and sign up!

Once you sign up, we'll send you links to free stuff like this every month. So we really hope you'll sign up.

Technologies for Worship Conference at NAB

Imagine every piece of film, video, radio, presentation equipment and software that you can think of all under one roof. Add in hundreds and even thousands of pieces of technology that you've never even heard of. Sprinkle in a dozen conferences on different topics complete with world renowned speakers and worshops. And what do you have? The National Association of Broadcasters Conference. Coming up in Las Vegas, April 14th-19th, NAB is one of biggest and most comprehensive broadcasting/film/video/television/radio/etc. conferences in the world.

Of particular interest to readers of this blog, The Technologies for Worship Conference, held during NAB, is a place to get information on the latest techniques and technologies in the worship field, to hear from some of the top experts in the field, and to take workshops focused on audio/video and film/video production as it relates to the worship environment.

It might be too late for you to make plans to go this year, but if you can go, go. If you're thinking about buying equipment for your church, for your company, if you want to see the latest video gear, computer gear, software, anything... If you're planning on making any big tech purchases or if you just want to wander around for days in awe, go. Even if you just get an exhibits pass, it's worth it. You can literally walk around for days and not see all the gear on display at NAB. It's a great time to see the equipment you're thinking/wondering about, to get your hands on it and to ask the knowledgeable sales reps who are there what they think about it and how you might be able to use it. The scope of NAB is mind blowing. And if you get all geeked up about film/video/presentation equipment, you will be in techie heaven.

Some of the speakers this year are:

Dale Alexander, Creative Technologies Consulting

Phil Cooke, Producer/Director

Paul Crouch Jr., Trinity Broadcasting Network

Craig Janssen, Acoustic Dimensions

Alex Kendrick, Sherwood Baptist Church

Jerry Rose, Total Living Network

And here are some of the workshops:

Saturday

Video Production Technologies (Basic)—Learn to create video and audio systems in one day!
Graphic Design Process & Brainstorming Techniques—See the Graphic Design Process in action.
Dynamic Worship by Design—Learn to build or improve a great worship environment

Sunday

Video Production Techniques (Advanced)—Participate in the video production cycle from scriptwriting to distribution.
Ministry Production Design—Learn to improve the presentation of your message.
Intro to 3D: Modeling, Animating, Lighting—Learn about the fundamentals of 3D Animation.
Hands-on Audio Mixing Workshop—Sit at a station with a live mixer, EQ, compressor/limiter/gat, effects, amplifier, headphones and more!

The Cutting Edge

We had a reader send us a request for more posts/information on the how to of editing. How do you edit? That's a really big question. The answer is simple and complicated all at the same time.

Editing in film or video is sequencing images or clips into a timeline. Choosing to place one moving clip after another in a certain order. In the end, editing is story telling. I had an editing professor who said the editor is the person who tells the joke. Someone thinks up the joke. Someone writes it. Someone records and/or captures it. And then the editor decides how it should be told.

One of the most eye opening assignments I had in film school was to edit together a scene from raw footage of the TV show Highlander. Anyone remember that show? Adrian Paul as Duncan MacLeod? Anyone? It wasn't a very good show, but I'm getting way off point. Everyone in the class was given the same raw footage to work with. We all spent a couple of weeks working on our cuts. And then we watched them together. Same footage. Totally different scenes. Everyone in the class told a totally different joke.

And so... You can learn how to push the right buttons, how this software works and that software works. And you can debate the merits of Final Cut Pro vs. Avid vs. Premiere. But before you get into any of that, if you want to be an editor, you need to study and think and watch and decide how you want to tell your jokes. Anyone can learn how to cut images into a sequence, but it takes a lifetime to learn where to place those cuts in order to have the impact you want. Every frame counts. Every moment matters. Where should you cut?

There's an excellent documentary about editing called "The Cutting Edge - The Magic of Movie Editing." It's a feature length documentary about the art and craft of film editing. You can order a DVD copy through Amazon. It was recently available online through Google video but it seems it's been taken down. I'll let you know if I find it somewhere. I also highly recommend Walter Murch's book "In the Blink of an Eye," also available through Amazon and other fine book stores. In the Blink of an Eye is the best book I've ever read about the philosophy or thought process that goes in to editing. Walter Murch is a long time editor for Francis Ford Coppola and edited, among other things, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. More recently, he was the editor on Cold Mountain, one of the first big budget features to be cut entirely with Final Cut Pro.

We'll post more on editing in the near future (something more hands on and practical :).